Some weird stuff would go on with the Titan reprints - they left out a whole book of Nemesis because they weren't keen on the artist.

that said, though I love Bellardinelli on other strips with Saline I'm all about the McMahon and Fabry - he was always all about really freaky creatures and not so much actual people - The Dead and Ace Trucking probably being many favourite things he's done and featuring no normal looking humans at all.

I should point out that the lovely phonebook sized volumes that Rebellion is pumping out at the moment are a lot more inclusive, so the missing Planet of the Spiders story gets restored in The Complete Nemesis the Warlock, Volume 1.

Interesting that the artists Titan ignored were all foreign - Belardinelli's Slaine, Redondo's Nemesis* and especially Ezquerra's Strontium Dog, one of 2000AD's defining series that Titan barely touched.

*Much as I love Redondo I think Belardinelli would have been much better suited to Nemesis. But it was O'Neill's strip, and I suppose they didn't want to risk upstaging him on what was essentially a fill-in.

EFF WHY EYE Whitechapelers (Whitechapelites? Whitechaps?) the 2000 AD website has had a big overhaul and is now brand spankingly new at www.2000adonline.com

We've gone heavy on the digital, with all issues available as digital copies and a new line in digital graphic novels available, as well as integrated social media. There's also a new news blog that will be updated regularly with story news and previews of merchandising and new titles, and later this month we'll be launching the wiki database - 35 years of 2000 AD history, entirely editable by the fans!

I am also excite at the Dredd reprints: just smashed through Block Mania and the Apocalypse War, a concentrated shot of thrill power into this Earthlet's noggin. Mike McMahon really was something, wasn't he.

Well, Heavy Metal comes out less than monthly, is a big thick magazine with a glossy cover, a spine, and high production values, and contains a translated European BD album plus shorter back-up strips, both of which are usually self contained. Like European BD generally, it has a range of genres and styles, but it's mainly fantasy-based. It's also explicitly adult and contains a lot of nudity.

2000AD comes out weekly, has roughly the same page-count as an American comic book but on bigger pages, and contains strips of 5-6 pages that are mostly serials featuring a range of continuing characters, some of which go back 30 years. It does run self-contained stories of similar length to a European BD album, but serialised in 5-6 page episodes over ten or twelve weeks. Historically it was a children's adventure comic aimed at pre-teen and early teen boys, printed in black and white on cheap paper, but it gained a loyal fanbase and grew up, to an extent, with it: these days it's glossy, full colour, has high production values and assumes a reasonably mature audience, but is still rarely explicit. It's lost it's early "what can we sneak past parents" attitude but gained a certain amount of long-term character development. It's mainly sci-fi (not hard sf by any means), occasionally dips in toe into fantasy, horror and similar genres, but nearly always action-adventure with a bad-ass central character.

I grew up on girls comics (Bunty, Judy, Girl, Mandy etc) mainly but was experiencing a teenage lull where nothing seemed to be aimed at me (hated Jackie and Just 17 but liked horror and SF books). I was in the hairdressers and my little brother was sent out to get something to read for me and mum. Being totally brilliant, he looked for comics and found a copy of the American reprints of Slaine the King. I LOVED Slaine as I was massively into Celtic mythology so I investigated and found it was in 200AD and I've been reading the Twooth ever since (I missed out the 90s low point and a few years ago I was in deep shit financially so had to stop again for a while.)

I have always loved how experimental 2000AD had been prepared to be. Back in the day I loved the artwork by @tim12s' mate, for example. He made mutants look truly weird. Milton Keynes actually looked cool! 200AD was never afraid to kill off a main character and some of them remained dead too! Even the Big Guy ages. When I'm reading a copy make my brain feels a bit funny. Maybe it's how you feel on crystal meth or something.

2000AD also prepared me for comics like Deadline (my next big passion) and made me realise that I would always be in love with the medium, no matter what.

Indeed. Someone picked up a superb Nemesis the Warlock by him recently, so it might be worth dropping him a line and seeing what he has and what his prices are. We managed to track him down and there is a contact email address on his website (I was meaning to drop him a line just to see what he was up to and whether we'd got all the information right in that thread, in case we'd mixed him up with another Simon Harrison at some point). He is still doing creative work but I am unsure if he could be tempted back to 2000AD as there was a mixed reaction amongst fans, plus he got associated with the Dark Days at 2000AD, which might have left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth, but who knows? I wouldn't rule out something in comics though but he seems to be doing rather well in other artistic areas at the moment.

Prog 1750 is another jumping-on point and has Dirty Frank and Indigo Prime in it! I'm calling it early, but this is looking like Prog of the Year. The IP story is the first arc in a longer storyline and it should be fantastic, you can have my guarantee on that.

Also remember that prog 1754 is the first one Diamond is shipping weekly in the US and that is coming up in October, so be sure to adjust your orders accordingly, or start ordering if you fancy that weekly thrill (just be sure to have started reading by 1750).